Meet Ashley Vasquez and Zachary Dripps

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Ashley Vasquez And Zachary Dripps. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with them below.

Ashley Vasquez, so happy to have you with us today. You are such a creative person, but have you ever head any sort of creativity block along the way? If so, can you talk to us about how you overcame or beat it?
The two of us design and draw our labels, shoot the product photography and videos, write all the product descriptions and run the website on top of all the day to day general business stuff. So creative blocks try to rear their ugly heads every once in a while and it’s easy to fall into the hamster wheel of work and get laser-focused on tasks.

We beat these blocks by giving our brains breaks with walks, meditation and good old fashioned time spent hanging out with our friends, but also by knowing where to look. We create because we’ve been inspired by so many phenomenal art forms in our lives. Sometimes the well runs a little dry and we have to go back to the source and refill our buckets of inspiration with movies, TV, books and travel.

Opening up our mental floodgates and letting other people’s art in is like lighting a match and starting a fire. It gets the creative juices flowing!

If all that fails, we just enter a funny prompt into an AI engine and see what it spits out, then use that as a starting point.

Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
We cofounded TBD Coffee Co in 2020. It started as a way for us to be creative together – a fun hobby – but now, 3 years later, we’re a growing coffee company, shipping anywhere in th U.S., offering roasted-to-order small batch craft coffee. We partner directly with farmers all around the globe and all of our beans are sourced ethically and sustainably.

But we’re probably best known for being off the rails. Our bag art and entire persona of the company are mirrors of our own weird senses of humor and interests.

Our dog is our Director of Consumer Affairs and we spend a lot of time dressing her up in tiny glasses and filming her pretending to grind coffee beans.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Ashley: How to Google, willingness to ask for advice and kindness.

We’re so lucky to live in the information age, with access to knowledge. You don’t have to know everything, you just gotta be willing to Google it. As for asking for advice, life is all about human connection. Tap into your people and be open to learning from them. And I’m a big believer that if kindness is built into everything you do, you’ll be successful.

Zach: Networking and treating everyone with respect are vital. I recently met someone who said they worked with their girlfriend, and they had to be nicer to them than they would normally treat people at work because they would see them at home after. When freelancing, you never know who’s going to call you with a job. Treat everyone as if you’re going to see them at home.

I work on the video content and photography for TBD Coffee Co. It’s important to focus on storytelling rather than just the camera equipment. Don’t get sucked into the latest technology hype. Remember, people and their stories come first!

Lastly, endurance is crucial. You’ll face a lot of rejection and long hours, but don’t give up! Stay focused on your goals, work hard, and keep pushing forward.

We’ve all got limited resources, time, energy, focus etc – so if you had to choose between going all in on your strengths or working on areas where you aren’t as strong, what would you choose?
Ashley: I’m team “play to your strengths”. I worked in the advertising world for many years and I always struggled with clients and colleagues primarily focusing on wanting every team member to be a jack of all trades, interchangeable and equally excellent at everything.

I prefer to focus in on individuality, unique perspectives and curated skillsets

Zach: It’s a great idea to specialize and find one specific role that you can master, but people should also not let working in that craft close them off to opportunities that might arise.

For example, I worked as a director of photography on set, but when given the opportunity to work at TBD Coffee Co, I jumped at the chance to create this new project.

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